Kill Hill is an outdoor project aimed at encouraging people to discover the mountains, created by free-rider Richard Gasperotti and his friend and photographer Milos Stafek. This time: Croatia’s Velebit mountains — snow, singletrack and one very real minefield.
After a couple of years away from Kill Hill, Summer 2019 rolled in and we felt the itch to get the band back together and hit the road once again. The idea was to grab the bikes, pack in one final trip before winter and head somewhere down south. With only a few days available, we chose Croatia. We both live in the Czech Republic, so it would give us plenty of warm weather and sunshine (or so we thought!) for only a day’s driving.
We were craving sunshine but that plan didn’t last very long. The forecast changed the day before the trip and instead of the sun, winter came early. The plans were all set though, and we took off south, picking up fellow rider Lukas Soumar along the way. Lukas is a great bikepacking enthusiast and outdoor equipment developer and is always a great person to have on any trip.
The Road to the Velebit Mountains
We packed into our monstrous Sprinter 4×4 truck and hit the road. We rolled through Austria and Slovenia then down to our destination, Tulove Grede in the Velebit mountains. The mountains are about an hour’s drive east of Zadar, a beautiful harbour situated on the Adriatic coast. The city and the wider area are most famous for their history, with plenty of reminders of the Roman occupation.
Fans of the fictional Apache hero Winnetou might remember this landscape from the movie adaptation, which was shot in the area in the 1960s.
Our First Surprise of the Trip
We arrived in the mountains just before dawn, dodging potholes on a bad gravel road and eager to get out and stretch our legs. We hopped out of the van and were hit with our first surprise of the trip. The first rays of sunlight revealed the last thing we’d ever have expected… an actual, real-life minefield. It was like something out of a movie, marked with a skull-and-crossbones sign warning us not to take another step.
We froze in our tracks and remembered the warnings we’d read before we left home.
Beware of Land Mines!
We back-tracked out of the area and double-checked the maps that we’d prepared before we hit the road.
We’d learned that approximately 2 million mines were laid in various areas of Croatia during the war of Croatian independence between 1991 and 1995. To this day there are still about 250,000 mines buried along the former front lines.
According to local statistics, more than 1,900 people were killed or injured by landmines during the war, and hundreds after that.
Because of thousands of huge rocks scattered all around the Velebit mountain ridge, the entire region is hard to access and therefore almost impossible to clear of the remaining mines. Add to that the fact that most minefields were laid without a pattern or any record, and they’re damn hard to detect.
We had done plenty of planning before we left home but didn’t realise the scale of the minefields. Seeing them up close with big, red WARNING signs made it feel a lot more real than red squares on a map!
Marked as Safe
With our history lesson complete, we made a new plan to ride.
The sun rose and the mountains began to reflect the light, gleaming silver. We’d hoped for warmth but the weather was determined to stay cold and windy, never getting above 4°C. Carrying bikes up the hill gave us some time to consider those landmines once again.
We had double- and triple-checked the map for an area marked as ‘safe’… but we still had strange thoughts of running into one of those long-forgotten relics. Our crew is called Kill Hill, but the plan was to slay trails rather than ourselves. So, we kept to the ‘safe’ routes and avoided straying off the beaten track.
On day two, we woke up to signs that a blizzard was gathering steam. Rather than tackle that, we relocated to the village of Dražice, which hosts a lovely, natural singletrack trail to the top of Vidajl peak at 1184 m.
Packing plenty of warm gear, we set off from the truck. It took us four hours to reach the peak, where we found fresh snow and stunning views. We took a moment to enjoy it, then turned round and dropped in.
The descent was fun and a little sketchy at times. There were several moments when gusts of sharp wind almost blew us off the trail. Despite that, we found some of the best singletrack on a Kill Hill trip to date.
We reached the bottom, grabbed some local food and fired up the truck to head for home. Despite the challenges, the trip had been great fun and an amazing adventure that we’ll remember for many years. We arrived home just a few days before Covid-19 reached our home country, plunging us into lockdown. It felt great to have had a final Kill Hill trip in the bag before heading into the unknown of self-isolation.
Words: Adam Marsal · Photos: Milos Stafek · Hill Killer/video: Richard Gaspi Gasperotti · AcePac: Lukas Soumar
More from Gaspi’s expedition files: Gaspi in “Over The Edge”
